Fool Proof Death: Gov. Mitt Romney, in an effort to appear tough for conservative voters, has introduced a bill to restore the death penalty in Massachusetts. He wants to require "conclusive scientfific evidence" for any death penalty. Sounds good, if you like the idea of the state killing people.

What's wrong with killing really bad people? It's still killing people. Some of them no doubt deserve to be killed. Possibly tortured. Maybe raised from the dead and executed again. But I, for one, don't want my government doing this. Maybe you trust your government to do this. I suppose conservatives just have a lot more faith in government than I do. That is, I guess, why conservatives are so strongly in favor of more government involvement in every aspect of their lives. It's that absolute trust they have in their government to always do the fool proof thing.

Massachusetts abolished the death penalty in 1984—1984, a very curious date.

Good News for Division I Colleges: The N.C.A.A. board of directors decided it would be okay for major colleges to expand their schedules from eleven to twelve games per season. That should help these colleges' revenue streams. By the way, who are the stockholders for all of these colleges? They seem to be making tons of money. At one time, American universities were known as the finest in the world, but today they are not producing the engineers, the mathematicians, the scientists that our country needs. It's good to know the football programs are floorishing. By the way, your kid's tuition will go up. Substantially, but he or she will have another football game to see.

That Great American, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, stopped a bill that would ban the drug, DHEA, which the body converts into steroids, although all of the major sports, including the Olympics, already ban its use. He wants major league baseball players to have the right to continue to use it.

Hatch's son, Scott Hatch, is a lobbyist for the National Nutritional Foods Association, a trade association for the dietary supplement industry, and has represented supplement companies themselves, including Twin Laboratories, which sells DHEA.

Drug manufacturing is a major industry in Utah, of course. Hatch is just looking out for his constituency, and his family's welfare, regardless of the cost to the rest of us.

DHEA is produced in the human body, although its production usually peaks around the age of 25. Its use as a drug is advertised as an anti-aging drug, and most of the artificial production comes from China, which sells about $47 million worth to the U.S.

In 1985 the FDA banned the over the counter sale of DHEA, but Hatch got a bill passed in 1994, which re-classified the drug as a food suppliment, effectively placing it into the hands of your teenage son.

Hatch is, as you should know, the same senator who has supported the use of ephedra, which has been linked with more than 100 deaths.

Genocide in Darfur—What Are We Doing about It?

Broadband Nation: So how's your broadband speed? Don't have broadband? Then you're probably not reading this, takes too long to do any real work with dial up.

Did you know that in Japan nearly every home is wired with a broadband connection? The cost? Only about $22 dollars per household. What are you paying?

And speed? In Japan broadband delivers speeds on the average of 16 times faster than in the U.S. How come? It's called national priorities. Before the Bushites entered office, the U.S. was among the world's leaders in connectivity. Now we rank at the bottom among industrialized nations. We've been busy searching for WMDAs in Iraq and fighting to get ten right wing judges into America's courtrooms. And then there was poor Terri Schiavo to politicize.

The Economy: Friday's downturn in the stockmarket topped off the worst week on Wall Street since election day. Consumers, for a change, are acting responsibly, according to one Citigroup exec; they're paying down credit card debt and limitting their gambling habits on The Street.

Speculation now surrounds the adverse effects that the high oil prices will have on the economy. In addition to higher gasoline prices affecting consumer behavior, the price of moving anything around the country is going up, and everything has to be shipped. Then there are heating and cooling considerations.

The Truth about American Health Care: Yesterday, Paul Krugman pointed out some interesting facts about just how great it is to be an American:

In 2002, the latest year for which comparable data are available, the United States spent $5,267 on health care for each man, woman and child in the population. Of this, $2,364, or 45 percent, was government spending, mainly on Medicare and Medicaid. Candada spent $2,931 per person, of which $2048 came from the government. France spent $2,736 per person, of which $2,080 was government spending.

The important thing to notice here is that we pay more in government taxes for health care than either of these two countries EVEN THOUGH WE PAY FAR MORE IN PRIVATE FEES!

Here's another dirty little secret: Our life expectancy and birth DEATH RATES are among the worst in the advanced/developed world. What's more, we have one of the highest rates of poverty.

Want more? How about the myth of people in Great Britain waiting in line for surgery? They forget to tell you that the surgery they are waiting for is ELECTIVE surgery. And that they people who might have to wait for this sort of surgery are comparable to that section of our population who have NO MEDICAL INSURANCE at all. You know, the one's who simply live with their ailments or who go to emergency rooms for any and every problem they have.

Where does the extra cost come from in the U.S.? While wages in the U.S. and France are almost identical, our doctors are paid much better. That's good news for the doctors, not so good for the patient. (Remember: doctors in the U.S. are businessmen; you might remember a time when they passed themselves off as folks "answering a calling," like your minister or priest, but then you might have come to realize that a good many of the latter or just businessmen too.)

Want more? According to The New England Journal of Medicine administrative costs in the U.S. eats up 31 cents of every dollar spent on medical care; in Canada paper work only costs 17 cents for every dollar spent. (Ask Canadians how many of them prefer coming to the U.S. for their medical care.)

And finally there is the unholy alliance between our health care providers and the pharmaceutical industry. You know, the people dedicated to enriching themselves off of your illness or disease.

As my grandfather said, it's a great life if you don't weaken.

The American Aristocracy: The super rich have gotten their lackeys in the House of Representatives to pass a bill to kill the estate tax for the fourth time in as many years. However, the prognosis for the bill in the Senate isn't so good.

President Bush's mandate to end the tax requires congress to pass a bill that will have NO EFFECT on current tax collection figures. That is, he wants to end the estate tax so that his aristoractic friends can pass on the mega bucks they've inhereted to their children without them paying their fair share of taxes. But he wants to maintain the flow of tax money into the government's coffers.

The only way to do this, of course, is to raise taxes in some other fashion, and the administration is dedicated to lowering taxes, not raising them. (READ MY LIPS!)

Let's see, in this hand I got a rock, in the other is a very hard place. Hmmmm?

According to Congress's own budget agency estimates, removing the tax would result in a net loss of $290 BILLION over the next ten years. (Can you imagine how much money these kiddies must have in order to pay that much money in taxes?) So, if the tax is repealed, that debt is going to be dumped on your back and mine, and our children. Aren't we already supporting those fat cats enough?

Who pays the estate tax? You have to have assets in excess of $1.5 million dollars to qualify (or $3 million for a married couple). Those exemptions are increasing too. By 2009 they will double.

Part of the fallacious argument against the estate tax has to do with the claim that it taxes money already taxed. For the most part this simply is not true. Money earned on houses, stocks and bonds are NOT taxed until they are sold, and if you inherit them, then they've never been taxed.

The real agenda here is to do away with the capital gains tax. The rich who make money off of money want to go untaxed. They believe folks who actually work should foot the bill for all of the government programs from which they have benefitted for more than 90 percent of the folks in this country who do the actual work and serve in your military.

Cardinal Law, American Catholicism, and general bewilderment: Say it ain't so, Vatican! American Catholics, or at least journalists, seem particularly puzzled by the promotion of Cardinal Law and his presiding over important functions in the recent funeral in Rome.

A number of years ago, I attended a function at a local church where an abbot explained to those assembled that they were NOT the church, the priests were the church, and that the priests could get along fine without them, although he did apprciate their attendance, not to mention their financial support. Actually he was using the term, vocation.

The point American Catholics need to remember is that in Rome's view, the sex scandals are seen in the light of how they harm the priesthood, not the effect they have had on the laity. Rome's self-interest is in its own priesthood, and the priesthood is made up of men who were attracted to her as she is or was, not for what she might become.

Certainly there are good men in the priesthood, who seek to do the best that they can for the humble parishioners whose labor and financial support keep the church alive, but it is unlikely that such men have the sort of ambition that will carry them to the highest levels of office within an organization that is in love with the European Middle Ages.

On the up side: "[F]resh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis." – Pope John Paul II, 1996 official declaration. Maybe there is hope for married priests and women priests, and even the advocacy of condom use.

Fighting Terrorism: The administration has stepped up its anti-terrorism activities by seeking to gain greater access to our financial records. That's good news for the NRA and the gun dealers that lobbying group works for, as it will help keep our attention away from the fact that the administration is doing absolutely nothing to prohibit terrorists from buying guns right here in the U.S.

The Price of Gasoline: Are you upset about the price of gas at the pump? Have you checked out what's happened to your heating bill? Compared it to last year? Was it really that much colder this year than last year? How about the price of food? And has your electric company adjusted your bill upward lately?

Don't you love it when they tell you that you should be grateful because gasoline costs five dollars a gallon and more in Europe and other places around the world? Of course "other places" have societies that are NOT built around everybody driving many miles to do just about anything. When was the last time you walked a half block down the street to buy your daily groceries? Unless you live in the middle of a large metro area, you probably don't even have sidewalks anymore. Over the past half century, sidewalks have become those concrete paths built in the burbs that take folks from their houses to their garages.

Did y0u know that the U.S. imports more oil from Africa than from the Mid-East?

The New Pope: People are wondering if the new Pope will move the Catholic Church into the post World War II era with enlightened views about women (birth control, at least being married to a priest if not being allowed to become a priest, divorce), but the most likely scenario seems to be a shadow of John Paul II with his views but without his charisma. All but three of the 117 electors were appointed by the last Pope. They undoubtedly share his intense conservatism but are less likely to voice his anti-capitalistic views. About the furthest any one of them is likely to go along these lines is to make a perfuctory visit to Fidel in Cuba and delivery an anti-condom message.

If a Latin American Cardinal is elected Pope, look for the church to press governments in that region of the world to tighten restrictions on the evengelicals, who are contesting with the church over members.

The Bush Tax Increase: Yeah, right! You thought your good ol' boy, W., was cutting your taxes, but the administration has known all along that the Alternative Minimum Tax, created during the Nixon administration (oh, how that name keeps popping up!) is beginning to take its toll. All you middle-income folks out there, get ready to pay your fair share of the rich folks' tax burden—the rich will be unaffected—those wonderful Bush tax cuts are as good as gone with the wind. And a smelly wind it was!

Sure, our good buddy W. has set up a bipartisan commission to change the tax code, including the Alternative Minimum Tax, but he's set up one condition—any changes must be revenue neutral. That is, the gov't must still collect the same amount of taxes. Do you think the gov't will tax the rich more? If you do, please let me know, 'cause I've got a bridge in Brooklyn that I'd love to sell you.

29,000 Gun Deaths Every Year: God forbid Congress should do anything that might interfere with the gun dealers selling their wares to terrorists and the killers of our children.

The good old NRA—that organization that suckers private gun owners into financing their private army of gun dealers—is still one of the biggest lobbyists in Washington. You know, those people who dump millions into Congressional campaigns so that incumbants can remain in office and continue to create laws that protect the dealers—NOT THE GUN OWNERS—the people who tell rabbit hunters and dear hunters that Congress will take away their shotguns unless they give the NRA money to make sure their civil liberties are protected.

All of that money goes to support yahoos like the dealer who sold the rifle to the Washington sniper, and once it was learned that he was this murderer's dealer, claimed that no less than 238 weapons had mysteriously disappeared.

Oh, my, poor gun dealer, and he didn't even know they were missing until then! Makes you wonder what kids are out there plotting the next school murders, or what nut the guy sold guns to who will now kill somebody in a church. Poor gun dealers. Do you think his conscience bothers him? Do you think he has a conscience?

And you say you don't believe in vampires.

Terrorism: It's a difficult time if you're in the FBI. The recent security report released to Congress points out the horrible state of affairs our intellegince boys are in. There is a terrible need to prove that they can capture the bad guys. This week we learned our boys in black have been doing their job in protecting us from the mad terrorist bombers: they arrested two sixteen-year-old girls.

Of course it's impossible to tell whether either of these girls were terrorists at all. They are both Muslim. Other than that, we know almost nothing about them. Because of the archane laws we allowed our government to foist on us, even the girls themselves don't know what evidence the FBI has against them.

Both of them are underage and now locked up in Pennsylvania, far from their homes, unable to get reliable legal advice, and being told threatening lies like "we'll ship your baby brothers and sisters off to foreign countries unless you confess to being terrorists."

If you are arrested in this country, you have the right to hear the charges against you, including the evidence that the government has, in order to defend yourself in a courtroom, judged by your peers. Unless you're accused of terrorism.

Terrorist suspects have no rights. No right to face their accusers and cross examin them. No right to learn what the evidence is against them. They can be kept in isolation until they die, without recourse. They can be shipped clandestinely—in the middle of the night—to foreign countries and there tortured, raped, and otherwise enslaved, without any recourse.

When this process began shortly after 9/11, we were told that the government would only use these powers against true terrorists. Those of us who feared that the administration would become Nixonesque and use the government powers to destroy political opponents of all stripes were mocked. W was a good, Christian man, we were told, and he would never tolerate arbitrary abuse of the power his administration had been granted.

Let's face facts folks, the FBI has to prove to us that it's doing its job. Recent evidence has demonstrated the contrary, and they've got to arrest somebody. Nobody's going to miss a sixteen-year-old girl, the daughter of an illegal immigrant, who has decided to comport herself like someone living in Afghanistan. She's the least among us. What does it matter how we treat the least among us as long as most of us can feel good about ourselves.

Luke 18:10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee , and the other a publican.
11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

And Now for the Good News! The government is debating what to do with its aging arsenal, specifically the nuclear device known as W-76, now some twenty years old. They want to spend a couple of billion dollars updating them, but the thing is that they are not sure if they even work properly.

Some within the government insist a basic design flaw will cause them to do much less damage, if they are ever used, than expected. On the other side of the coin, if they are not updated, they will need to be replaced, which will require renewned underground testing, in violation of international agreements, not to mention common sense.

Oh, yes, there is a third option: just get rid of the damn things. No one seems to have thought of this. Let's see, we invade Iraq because of non-existant nukes, and now we need to figure out how to kill every living thing on earth ten times over.

Speaking of Aging: The social security system figures to go broke in about seventy-five years, especially if people live to the government's projected life expectancy at that time: 150 years of age.

It seems that when the social security system was devised people lived about half as long on average as they do now, so the government did some simple minded math and projected life expectancy to double again over the same time frame. Using that kind of muddy thinking, we can expect people to live to a thousand years of age within a couple of more generations—even if we are eating our selves to death. (See today's New York Times' article, "Drug Makers Race to Cash In on Nation's Fight Against Fat.")

Intelligence: Now that at least a glimmer of truth is coming out about the absolute failure of intelligence with regards to the lead up to the Iraq war, an interesting note is the virtual uselessness of the President's Daily Briefs. One analyst referred to the one-sided documents as "disastrously one-sided … daily drumbeat[s]" of sensationalist headlines. Sounds like the man was reading somebody's blog.

According to Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. Director, preparing the daily brief eats up as much as six hours of his time every day. It's good to know his time is being used so wisely.

Your Pay Raise: So how much did you get last year? If you're like most people, your pay has remained stagnant for almost thirty years. Fortunately, America's top CEOs are making up for the rest of us. The chiefs of 179 companies were paid an average of $9,840,000 last year, up about 12 percent from the previous year. It restores your faith in the American way, don't it? And to think, not one of them can play short stop or has a decent curve ball.

The Arts: Sin City is now in a theater near you. Reports indicate it's racking in the moola as adolescent boys rush to see another comic book made into a movie. I can hardly wait for the video.